In the Night Room (33 page)

He spun around and passed through the front door without bothering to open it. Even his boot heels looked pissed off. A moment after he had entered the house, an explosion of light turned all the windows brilliantly white, and his great wings creaked open and penetrated through the walls without breaking them. Glowing, glowering, WCHWHLLDN reared up through the roof and into a wide column of light that now circled the house. Each of his hands held something slithery, shapeless, and dark, from which depended a long, apronlike robe in which I thought I saw a thousand glittering little eyes and a thousand screaming mouths.

I thought I knew what he was carrying—not the evil that had been done in the house but the pain and sorrow of Kalendar’s victims. All along, that was what had made the little house so ugly, so elusive, so avoidable: Kalendar’s real trophies—not the corpses of his victims but what they had felt in his presence. WCHWHLLDN was the night crew; he did the cleaning up and clearing away. The giant angel flew higher and higher, mounting the sky, and the dirty fabric trailing behind him unreeled and unreeled from the house. When the last of it went snapping upward and disappeared, the angel came battering down from the heavens and did the same all over again, repeatedly, bearing away the scraps and residue of that stinking darkness and that sacred charge until the house was cleansed. The burn marks had disappeared from the front of the house.

I think WCHWHLLDN would have made Philip very happy, for in his way the angel followed his wishes to the last degree: he burned down the house, dug a six-foot-deep pit where it had been, filled the pit with gasoline, and set it alight. His job, his task throughout eternity, had been purification, and he had been assigned this case. He cured infection and eliminated pollution. In his eyes, I, along with every other human being, represented a vast irritant. We carried pollution and contamination wherever we went, and we were far too imperfect to be immortal. We didn’t have a chance of understanding what was going on until we reached zamani. (Come to think of it, this is pretty much the way Philip used to feel, back in the days before his rescue by China Beech.)

The light no one could see left the Kalendar house and the star realms above it; the work no one had seen had been concluded. I pushed myself upright and staggered back to my car, bruised and aching and almost too numb to feel.

When I let myself back into what had been our room and now was mine, I felt Willy’s absence the way you feel a phantom limb. She had been amputated from me, and although I had performed the surgery, I wanted her back. I missed her vastly, oceanically. Her face appeared wherever I looked, on the windows, in the wallpaper, in the air above the bed we had shared. The Cleresyte’s touch, and the fall it had given me, still pounded throughout my body. In a funny way, I didn’t mind, because the pain helped take my mind off Willy.

I filled the tub and soaked in a hot bath until my fingertips were wrinkled. Hunger returned to me as I toweled myself off, and with Willy’s voice in my ear, I called room service. Sheer longing tempted me to order two steaks, two orders of onion rings, and a dozen candy bars, but when the waiter answered, I settled for tomato soup and roasted chicken, the kind of meal my mother used to make.

In my mind, I had changed so much that I was surprised my shirts and jackets still fit. When the food came, I took a couple of bites and thought I was going to throw up before I could get to the bathroom, but I did get to the bathroom, and instead of throwing up I stood over the toilet and made gagging noises.
Where was Willy?
I wondered. I had made up Elsewhere, but I couldn’t go there any more than I could go to Hendersonia.

Except, of course, that I could—but before that prospect, I stepped back, shivering, unwilling to tamper with those dear shades and phantoms. About that time, while I wandered toward Mark’s computer, I remembered, I thought I remembered, that I had agreed to a contract with a sleek character made of cobwebs and mouse droppings. That part of the evening had been knocked out of my head by the angel’s bruising touch and the sight of that industrious and furious being at his eternal task: both of these had banged my head against the ground, inducing a mild amnesia.

I sat at the keyboard, clicked on something or other, I know not what, and a familiar blue rectangle claimed the center of my screen. Cyrax had dropped in to make his good-byes and pass on some more of his ominous advice:

underfoot, u hav dun xceeding well & I yr gide now plant a ki55 up-on yr wrinkled brow. 1gnore not yr hart-8rake, u hav earned it, it is yrs! & now u hav another mity task, ol’ buttsecks, 1 to test u to the x-treem of yr fond talent (LOLOL)

oho my deer u must follow yr Dark Man Joseph Kalendar through the lost echoes of his nuit sombre profonde! Yr title shall b—KALENDAR’S REALM. u must not gild that lily nor praise it, wht u wrote abt. his dghter struk hom, it did strike hom & he wants onle justthis. Justthis iz next-dor 2 mercy but another country 2 it! UZ yr hart-brake & u will find the way within.

those 2 u love r in yr ELSEWHERE, which is our EDEN, frum whence they began so long ago. We watch ovr them in their EDEN, self-created & beautiful to behold. u gave them that!

a last word abt the last word (LOL)—u will behold an IDEEL, & u must pass it by. IDEEL will des-troy u 4 u r not red-e 4 it, buttsecks, NOT NOT NOT 4 u r an un-perfect being in a un-perfect world, that is yr strength & yr lode-ston & yr compass 2.

35

At five o’clock in the sunlit afternoon of Friday, the twelfth of September, Timothy Underhill took his seat at the end of the second row of metal folding chairs lined up in a sweet, breezy glade in Flory Park, on the far eastern edges of Millhaven. A professor of religion at Arkham University had once told him that it was one of the most beautiful parks in the country, and he saw no reason to dispute the old man’s claim. Sunlight fell through the leaves overhead and scattered molten coins across the grass. In front of the rows of chairs, filled primarily with teachers and administrators from Philip’s school and congregants from their church, Christ Redeemer, Philip stood a little way before an imposing African-American gentleman wearing a white robe with voluminous sleeves over a shirt with a black banded collar. This was the Reverend Gerald Strongbow, who conducted services at Christ Redeemer and before whom Philip Underhill’s lifelong racism had, apparently, left him, as if by unofficial exorcism.

Tim had developed a great fondness for Reverend Strongbow. In a brief conversation at the edge of the glade, the reverend had told him that he enjoyed his books. The man had a gorgeous voice, resonant and deep, capable of putting topspin on any vowel he chose. After the remark about Tim’s novels, the reverend inclined his head and said, more softly, “Your brother was a tough customer when he first came to us, but I think we managed to slide some good Christian goose grease into his soul.”

A little buzz and rustle of conversation went through the assemblage when China Beech appeared, holding lightly on to her brother’s arm, at the far end of the glade and, in a cream-colored dress, pearls, and a pert little hat with a veil, began to make her way up the aisle. The expression on his dour brother’s face when China Beech joined him in front of the clergyman astounded Tim, for it contained an emotional sumptuousness that would never before have been within crabby Philip’s reach.

Tim thought of Willy Patrick coming toward the signing table at Barnes & Noble, fear, fatigue, and fresh, amazed love shining in her wonderful face; and he thought of Lily Kalendar, stopping his heart as she carried a book and a cup of tea past a Bauhaus window. At that moment, if he could somehow have married both of them, he would have linked arms with his Lilys and joined his brother at Reverend Strongbow’s portable altar.

He thought,
Can I really write a book about that monster Joseph Kalendar?
Immediately, he answered himself:
Of course I can. I am Merlin L’Duith, old soldier, old killer, man of conscience, magician, and queer comrade in arms!

After the ceremony, everyone drove to one of Bill Beech’s old clubs for a reception party in the ballroom, and while the band was playing “Stardust” (for the youngest musician there could remember the Eisenhower presidency), Philip approached Tim at one side of the bandstand and with a touch of his old paranoia said, “I saw you grinning to yourself while China walked up the aisle. What were you so amused about?”

“You make me happy these days, Philip.”

He took it in good faith. “Lately, I almost make myself happy. By the way, where’s your friend Willy? I thought we’d be seeing her today.”

“Yes, Tim,” said China Underhill, wandering up. “I hope you know you could have brought Willy. I think she’s charming.”

“She wishes she could be here, too,” Tim said. “Unfortunately, she had to go back to New York this morning.”

“Um,” Philip said. “Will you be seeing her a fair amount, back home?”

“Answer cloudy,” Tim said. “Ask again.”

“Willy said the funniest thing to me during your reading,” said China. “She asked me if I loved my God. I said, ‘Of course I love my God, Willy. Don’t you?’ You’d never guess what she told me. She said, ‘I love my god, too, but I wish he didn’t need it so much.’ ”

“You can’t imagine how much I miss her,” Tim said.

From Timothy Underhill’s journal

So here I am, on tour, in the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis, waiting for my escort to drive me first to a radio station, then to a bookstore for a reading, then to the airport—tomorrow, Phoenix! After a morning-show interview and before lunch with my publisher’s rep, I wandered around downtown St. Louis, trying to get the flavor of the city, and when I came across a big secondhand- and rare-books store called Stryker’s, I strolled in. I cannot enter such a place without buying a book or two, and I roamed through the stacks looking for anything I hadn’t read that might be interesting. In minutes, I turned up a beat-up old copy of H. G. Wells’s
Boon,
the book in which he disparaged Henry James, and because it cost only five dollars, I picked it up. In another part of the store, I found an even more battered copy of Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler’s
The Young and Evil,
with a dust jacket yet, going for the price of a necktie at Barneys.
Boon
and Parker Tyler would certainly see me through Phoenix and on to Orange County. I was winding my way back through the aisles and half corridors when I saw the sign for
MYSTERY SUSPENSE
and decided, in a moment of authorly vanity, to see how many of my books they had in stock.

On a long, waist-high shelf I found a nice row of my books, two copies of
Blood Orchid,
three of
The Divided Man,
one of
A Beast in View,
and two each of the books I wrote with my collaborator. Ten altogether, a handsome number, and all in hardback. As books will do, the middle copy of
The Divided Man
seemed to call to me and invite inspection. In all innocence, I reached for the book and pulled it halfway off the shelf. Then I noticed that it was roughly thirty pages shorter than the books on either side. I removed it from the shelf and saw that it was in fine condition and had not been vandalized. In fact, it seemed remarkably bright; in fact, it seemed brand-new. What happened next was a moment of recognition, surprise, and terror all jumbled up together. The word “galvanic” was invented for moments like that. I uttered some sort of moan or grunt, as if the book had stung me.

The “real” book of my best book—I realized first how beautiful it must be, then how much I could learn from it. What powers would be mine, were I to read it. I could, it occurred to me, learn how to write the real book, which was the perfect book, every time. I could be the best novelist in the world! Praise, adulation, love, money, prizes would descend upon me in a great wave of never-ending applause. My hands trembled with the majesty of what they held, and I felt a sick love, an addict’s love, for the book.

A slight disturbance in the murky light at the end of the
MYSTERY SUSPENSE
aisle caused me to look up, and I found myself confronted by ungainly, unhappy April Blue-Gown. My sister was glaring at me with eyes that were furious black dots. Her mouth shaped words I did not want to, and did not, hear. This time, I listened anyhow. Only then, too late in the day for it to have influenced me, did I remember Cyrax telling me u will behold an IDEEL, & u must pass it by. I shoved the sirenlike thing back on the shelf and charged to the front of the store. I want no part of the ideal, I want nothing to do with it. I’ve seen what it does to people. Give me the messy, un-perfect world any day.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

P
ETER
S
TRAUB
is the author of seventeen novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City with his wife, Susan, director of the Read to Me Program.

ALSO BY PETER STRAUB

NOVELS

lost boy lost girl

Black House
(with Stephen King)

Mr. X

The Hellfire Club

The Throat

Mrs. God

Mystery

Koko

The Talisman
(with Stephen King)

Floating Dragon

Shadowland

Ghost Story

If You Could See Me Now

Julia

Under Venus

Marriages

POETRY

Open Air

Leeson Park & Belsize Square

COLLECTIONS

Wild Animals

Houses Without Doors

Magic Terror

Peter Straub’s Ghosts
(editor)

Conjunctions 39:
The New Wave Fabulists
(editor)